Last week, Mark Davy spoke at the NLA briefing “London’s future cultural offer” that asked the following questions:

  1. How are our major cultural institutions opening up to the public and bringing more people in?
  2. How are they pushing culture out into the wider city?
  3. What role do cultural buildings play in regeneration in the capital?
  4. How are they working to attract new audiences and expand their reach through their estates?
  5. What role do cultural quarters have to play in London?
  6. And what does this increased activity mean for London as a major cultural city in today’s global context?

Here are some soundbites from the day:

MUNIRA MIRZA Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture, GLA

  • 1 in 5 jobs in London is connected to the Creative Industries.
  • Two big challenges the cultural sector needs to address are growth and the changing visitor sector.
  • Munira Mirza champions the Turbine Hall as an excellent example of a new type of public space for new kind of art: new, accessible, and giving the public much more ownership.
  • Standing still is not an option for cultural organisations, they need to move on with the time.

DAME JUDITH MAYHEW JONAS DBE, Board Member, Imperial War Museum

  • The cultural sector needs people with greater commercial experience and expertise.
  • We need to think more creatively about funding.
  • Recognise the huge mentoring role and expertise trustees play for cultural organisations.
  • The UK has a significant voluntary activity within its cultural industries.

SIR NICHOLAS KENYON Managing Director, Barbican Centre

  • Need to re-imagine the way cultural buildings are designed and managed.
  • The origins of building are very different from their initial function and aim.
  • The built environment has a significant role to play in supporting London’s cultural offer. There is a need to create a greater sense of welcome to cultural organisations.
  • Special attention needs to be paid to the public realm.
  • The behavior of audiences is changing. They want to be actives players rather than passive receivers.
  • Articulating the public realm around Barbican for greater connectedness between various cultural institutions.
  • A language needs to be developed in order to further developers’ understanding the benefits of including culture in their programme.

DONALD HYSLOP Regeneration and Partnerships, Tate Galleries

  • Long-term thinking is in short supply in the development sector. Cultural sector on the other hand is great at addressing the long term vision
  • Hyslop argues that the public sector is still leading in innovative architectural solutions.
  • Cultural institutions need to be embedded in the core of decision making about the future.
  • Meanwhile projects should be running at all times and not only during interim periods.

JUDE KELLY Artistic Director, Southbank Centre

  • Thought leadership should be gathered from across the country.
  • Building potential for the individual citizens.
  • What possible futures can we imagined?
  • Mind over matter is what regeneration is.
  • 55% artist of the Festival of Britain of 1951 were refugees and under 30.
  • The possible future should be imagined in terms of economic need as well as social fabric.
  • Restrictions of physical space should not tamper our imagination.
  • Creating spirit of involvement around the festival site.
  • We use culture to change people’s participation in life.
  • The word ‘culture’ still has a terrible reputation. The language of culture is politically behind.
  • We need to find an effective way to mix entrepreneurial-ism and making creativity happen.

KATE GOODWIN Drue Heinz Curator of Architecture, Royal Academy

  • We need to create somewhere to go that is beyond a commercial offer, a place that has a sense of welcome.
  • Gestures out to the public streets and re-imagining the RA.
  • Possibility of bringing arts school ideas into the heart of Mayfair.

ADRIANA MARQUES Head of Arts and Culture, London Legacy Development Corporation

  • The importance of getting culture into the fabric of the Olympic Park from the very beginning.
  • Sharing the future vision of Olympicopolis. New cultural partners announced: UCL, UAL London College of Fashion, V&A East, Saddlers Wells and Smithsonian.
  • Calling for greater collaboration in the public realm.

SIMON ERRIDGE Director, Bennetts Associates Architects

  • We are no longer designing cultural icons, we are looking at re-consolidating historic buildings as well.

MARK DAVY Founder, Futurecity

  • The world has changed but the team leading regeneration and planning in cities has not.
  • Changing geography of London is providing new exciting opportunities.
  • London is changing from a city of villages to a city of Creative Districts.
  • There is a need to use budgets in a more creative ways. And there are good examples of this starting to happen in the world of developers.
  • StudioRCA is a good example of a developer letting go of a big chunk of ground floor space within a development for a lead artist to use it in creative and imaginative ways.
  • Increasing number of placemaking driven cultural projects funded by private sector in London.
  • Different kind of mindset and language is needed for satisfying the developers’ appetite for arts and culture interventions.
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